NYT buried the deficit blowout in a business story about the dollar. Dollar Hits a 2-Year Low Against Euro And, following its standard practice, it assumed that readers of its business pages would not know what the current account deficit means, glossing it as eA broader measure of the country’s international financial standing’. Even the WSJ does this.

So the average American, even an assiduous reader of the newspapers, is basically uninformed about what would anywhere else be regarded as a balance-of-payments crisis. By contrast, the foreign affairs coverage of the NYT has always been excellent and, since September 11, the same is coming to be true of other US media. Perhaps they’re right not to worry, but the currency markets don’t think so.